The Rise and Decline of Small‐Scale Sugarcane Production in South Africa: A Historical Perspective

South Africa's sugar industry has long been distinguished by its large number of small‐scale sugarcane growers (SSGs) farming on ‘communal’ land and its peculiar privately administered regulatory structure. In recent years, however, the numbers of small‐scale growers have declined precipitously. This paper argues that the relationship between the rise and fall of SSG production and the industry's governing regulatory structure is closer than usually appreciated. The emergence of SSG production in the late 1970s and the 1980s can be traced to industry‐subsidized initiatives, disguised as small‐scale credit, to bring commercially inalienable Bantustan land into cane production with strong miller oversight. From the late 1980s to 1990s, however, the elimination of these subsidies encouraged millers to subcontract support to farmers, while simultaneously instigating an increase in SSG numbers by removing restrictions on grower registration. Although low rainfall is a central proximal factor in the rapid decline of the SSGs in the 2000s, their rapid increase was structurally fragile.     

候变化对我国种植业化肥投入的影响

气候变化不但会对农业产出产生影响,而且还会对农业生产要素投入产生影响。利用我国26个省2001—2012年的面板数据,实证分析气温和降水量变化对我国种植业生产中化肥使用强度的影响,结果表明：从整体看,年平均气温上升有助于降低化肥的使用强度,而年降水量的增加则会提升化肥的使用强度;对于热带亚热带季风气候区,降水量增加、气温上升均会导致化肥使用强度增加;对于温带季风气候区,气温上升会导致化肥使用强度下降,但是降水量增加对化肥使用强度的影响不显著。气候变化对不同气候区农业生产的化肥投入具有不同的影响,因此有关化肥控制的政策有必要考虑气候因素的影响,政策目标的设定也应体现区域差异。     

加快构建和完善黑龙江省县域经济市场化

加快构建和完善县域经济市场化提高农业竞争力,要取消各种带有排他性、歧视性和垄断性的政策,消除市场上的种种关卡、壁垒.要稳定和完善以家庭联产承包责任制为基础统分结合的双层经营体制.按市场需求组织生产,要和本县的资源条件相结合,发挥资源优势,杷市场导向和发挥资源优势结合起来.加快发展第三产业.要充分发挥我省城市(镇)的中心作用,实行城乡一体化发展.应扩大农业方面的对外经济技术交流,鼓励兴办"三资"农业企业和农产品加工企业.要建立起健全有效、分工明确的市场监督管理体系,就必须加强和改善我省县域市场经济的宏观调控.进一步认真做好县级政府职能的转变,从主要是管理企业的微观经济活动转换到主要是对县域经济的宏观调控上来.     

干冰去污在核电站换料相关设施中应用方案的初步研究

干冰技术的去污效率高、基材损伤小、二次废物量少,在核设施的去污实践中越来越多的受到重视。由于核电站反应堆换料系统的去污比较常见,通过对反应堆换料水池、乏燃料贮存运输容器的去污需求分析,设计一套干冰去污装置,实现对核设施的有效去污,满足人员操作和设备运输的要求;其去污过程和最终二次废物产量也遵循了废物最小化的原则,且环保高效,是未来放射性去污的重要发展方向。     

Cultivating Ecological Knowledge for Corporate Sustainability: Barilla's Innovative Approach to Sustainable Farming

In this paper, we link three theoretical perspectives – organizational knowledge, ecological knowledge and social–ecological systems – to derive new conceptions of multi‐disciplinary, multi‐tier, sustainability‐oriented knowledge. Our study examines how collaboration between pasta‐producer Barilla, the farmers/smallholders supplying the firm and scientists generated sustainability practices in the agri‐food industry by creating transformative ecological, technical and scientific knowledge. In 2010, Barilla initiated a sustainable farming project to significantly reduce the environmental impact of cultivating durum wheat, its most important raw material. Core components included replacing monoculture with crop rotation, collectively creating innovative approaches that support farmers’ decision making and generating widely accessible guidelines for sustainability‐oriented cropping knowledge and practices. These collaborative efforts initiated profound transformations within and beyond the organization's boundaries via increased production yields, reduced environmental impacts and improved sustainability of farming practices, which generated economic, social and ecological benefits for farmers, surrounding communities and the firm. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

干挂石材幕墙的设计

干挂石材幕墙是建筑幕墙的一种类型,近年来在国内高层建筑外墙装修中得到广泛应用。结合工程实例,文章从安全施工原则出发,通过对干挂石材幕墙的构造、结构设计、主要材料的选用及其施工工艺等环节进行论述,阐述了干挂石材幕墙深化设计过程。     

Tourism and the ‘dry law’ in Kerala – exploring the nexus between tourism and alcohol

ABSTRACT

On the 24th of August 2014 the state of Kerala announced that alcohol will be progressively banned through different phases, with a plan of implementing a complete ban by 2025. The ban was eased in July 2017; yet, it sparked heated debates about its impacts on the tourism industry, which highlighted the strong nexus between alcohol and tourism. Despite animated discussions continued online for months after the announcement of the ban, there have not been studies assessing the impact of the ban on tourism/tourists. Through a thematic analysis of online texts published on TripAdvisor, this paper explores tourists’ perceptions and opinions of the implementation of the ‘Dry Law’ in Kerala. Moreover, this work also investigates whether the ban discouraged potential tourists to visit Kerala. Overall, our analysis reveals that the ban did not discourage potential tourists to visit Kerala, although many regarded the possibility of having moderate amounts of alcohol on holiday as pleasant. Importantly, our study also contends that the narratives about the ‘Dry Law’ produced and propagated online were often representative of political structures of power, which linked tourism to alcohol irrespective of the real impact of the ban on tourism.     

Focal area approach: a participatory community planning approach to agricultural extension and market development in Kenya

The focal area approach has been developed and applied by the public agricultural extension service in Kenya to harness the comparative advantages of various players for the overall development of rural areas. Participatory processes have been institutionalized in public extension and have brought new meaning to both extension and understanding rural development. The interactive engagement of smallholder farmers by public extension and the conducive environment created by the approach for other service providers to interact with communities has brought many advantages. The participation of women and youth, the poor and vulnerable groups in generating information and solutions to address food security and other rural needs has been impressive. The knowledge gained from the interaction has contributed in influencing policy change and research priorities. Smallholder farmers have formed common interest groups, which has enabled them to move from subsistence to business farming associated with increased knowledge, increased productivity and increased demand for produce. The approach has enabled extension service providers to reach more farmers per year than they did previously. The partnerships created between public extension with other institutions contributed to enhancement of knowledge and skills that has enabled the approach to spread to more areas in the country. Further capacity development among the extension providers and formulation of supportive policies that encourage demand-driven extension will lead to further improvement of the approach and scaling up.     

Will urban farming survive the growth of African cities: A case-study in Kampala (Uganda)?

Despite the fact that urban farming is widespread in many African cities there is not yet a clearly defined view on how to deal with these activities in urban planning and management. On the basis of field interviews in the rapidly expanding metropolitan area of Kampala (Uganda) three different urban farming types were identified: subsistence farming, garden farming and commercial farming. These three urban farming types have their own spatial organisation logic and each interact in a specific way with urban expansion. In this paper the possible outcome of three alternative urban management strategies for Kampala (urban sprawl, urban infilling and a combination of both) were translated into spatially explicit land use scenarios for the years 2020 and 2030. This allowed to evaluate the spatial impact of each scenario on the future viability of the different urban farming practices. Urban sprawl fragments large open spaces thereby reducing the space for subsistence farming with 80% by 2030. Urban infilling, on the other hand, decreases the opportunities for small to medium scale garden and commercial farming by a possible reduction of 62% of the available farming land by 2030. The results of the analysis are useful for urban planners as they give insight in the potential future effects of proposed planning strategies on urban farming.     

Farmers’ perceptions of biodiversity: Lessons from a discourse-based deliberative valuation study

In agricultural landscapes farmers have a large impact on biodiversity through the management decisions they apply to their land. Farmers’ perceptions of biodiversity and its different values influence their willingness to apply biodiversity friendly farming practices. The results of a discourse-based, deliberative biodiversity valuation are presented in this paper. Organic and conventional farmers’ perceptions of the different values of biodiversity were analyzed across three European countries. Focus group methodology was used to explore how farmers perceive biodiversity and how they assess its values.Our results suggest that farmers’ perceptions of biodiversity are strongly embedded in their everyday lives and linked to farming practices. Besides recognizing the importance of species and habitat diversity, farmers also acknowledge wider landscape processes and attach value to the complexity of ecological systems. Organic farmers tended to have a more complex and philosophical approach to biodiversity and they were relatively homogeneous in this aspect, while conventional farmers showed larger heterogeneity. Ethical and social values were important for all farmers. Economic value was more dominant in the conventional focus groups.The discourse based deliberative valuation method is worth applying in relation to biodiversity for two reasons. First, this method is able to reflect the heterogeneity of non-scientist participants and the context in which they are embedded, which both have a great impact on the results of the valuation. Second, deliberation upon the importance of biodiversity makes possible to understand the competing perceptions of biodiversity and to include different value aspects in the valuation process. The policy oriented consequence of the research can be drawn from the observation that farmers have a strong acknowledgement of ethical and social biodiversity values. This suggests that soft policy tools could also foster biodiversity sensitive farming methods, complementary to mainstream monetary incentives.